DRINKING WATER
The Power Of Ductile Iron Pipe: A Solution For Every Application
Ductile iron pipe is a versatile, reliable solution that resists UV degradation, freezing, and physical stress. Its unmatched durability ensures long-term performance in any piping application.
DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS
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SaaS Managed Solution Improves Efficiencies And Customer Service
When Chris Adcock became the Executive Director at the Pittsylvania County Service Authority (PCSA) in 2013, he found an aging water system. With customer service concerns and rising costs, Chris started his search for the best water metering solution and found the BEACON® Software as a Service (SaaS) managed solution from Badger Meter.
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Membrane Module Pilot Test In North Dakota
Toray UF membrane modules were piloted over a fifteen-week period to help service the growing demand for clean water in southwest North Dakota. The outcome, as part of the Southwest Pipeline Project (SWPP), would be construction of the Oliver-Mercer-North Dunn (OMND) Water Treatment Plant.
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Understanding Flow And Pressure In Municipal Water Systems
Effective pressure management is essential for reliable municipal water delivery, preventing pipe bursts, improving energy efficiency, and extending infrastructure life. Balancing flow and pressure, which are affected by factors like elevation and pipe integrity, is key to utility operations.
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Why A Little Knowledge About Sensors Can Be A Dangerous Thing
Every day our technical support people answer questions on the selection of sensors for pH, ORP, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and turbidity. No issue generates more confusion than cell constants for conductivity sensors. The vast majority of returns we process are for conductivity sensors that were ordered with the wrong cell constant. It turns out that cell constants are something that we all read but that most of us don’t really understand. Pick the wrong cell constant for a probe and your analyzer will happily give you numbers to 3 significant digits. The only problem is those numbers are wrong. By Mark Spencer, President, Water Analytics
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Nutter Fort Embraces Smart Water Technology For A Sustainable Future
Discover how Nutter Fort, WV, modernized its water infrastructure with smart metering technology, reducing water loss, cutting costs, and fostering sustainability in a close-knit community.
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Bridging The Gap: How LeakZon Unifies SCADA And AMI For Smarter Water Management
In the world of water utilities, two crucial systems often operate in parallel: SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure). While both play vital roles in managing water networks, their separation can create challenges for utilities striving for efficiency and reduced water loss.
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AMERICAN Provides 'Major League' Solutions For Atlanta Braves' New Stadium
Major League Baseball may be in their All-Star Break, but AMERICAN’s pipe, hydrants, and valves at World Series Champion Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park stadium never take a break. AMERICAN’s all-star line-up of products serve and protect 24/7/365 for decades.
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Water System Operator Is Cutting NRW Losses Down To Size
When the aging water distribution infrastructure in Araguaína, Brazil, (pop. 183,000) reached a level of 47 percent non-revenue-water (NRW) loss, the contracted utility operator knew that something needed to change.
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Hassle-Free Operations: Pinnacle's Promise To Maintenance Teams
At Pinnacle Ozone Solutions, we understand that your team is the backbone of operational success. You keep facilities running, problems solved, and downtime minimal. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to simplify your workflow with smart, scalable ozone systems that take the hassle out of your day-to-day.
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Rainwater For Reuse As Drinking Water
When McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario built their new Engineering Technology Building, they used the latest state-of-the-art technology not only to achieve LEED Gold certification, but also to create a living laboratory to train students on the building systems of the future.
DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES
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Reducing And Reusing Water In Steel Manufacturing2/28/2022
The art of manufacturing steel for industries is well over 100 years old. Within this time, the steel business has fulfilled consumer needs, including construction, transportation, and manufacturing. The steel manufacturing process is quite intensive as it requires a lot of water to cool down the application. Steel plants constantly look for strategies that can help sustain the steel for a longer time by efficiently improving water and energy consumption.
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Application Note: Ozone Measurement In Potable Water3/1/2010
Ozone is a powerful oxidizing agent that can be used to destroy the organic compounds that affect the taste and odor of potable water. Environmental concerns have led to increased use of ozone because, unlike chlorine, it does not form hazardous by-products.
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Activated Carbon And Adsorption Of Trichloroethylene (TCE) And Tetrachloroethylene (PCE)12/30/2013
Trichloroethylene (TCE) and Tetrachloroethylene (PCE) are two of the most common solvents that contaminate groundwater supplies in the United States. Both solvents see frequent use in the extraction of fat, in the textile industry, in the production of various pharmaceutical and chemical products. TCE is also used as a degreaser from fabricated metal parts, and PCE serves as a component of aerosol dry-cleaning solvents.
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The Basics: Testing RO Quality4/28/2014
Osmosis is the phenomenon of lower dissolved solids in water passing through a semi-permeable membrane into higher dissolved solids water until a near equilibrium is reached.
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Application Bulletin: Reverse Osmosis3/19/2008
Osmosis is the phenomenon of lower dissolved solids in water passing through a semi-permeable membrane into higher dissolved solids water until a near equilibrium is reached
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Groundwater Remediation12/1/2020
Good quality groundwater is an important natural resource. It provides drinking water for the public as well as process water for industrial applications. Groundwater can become contaminated through a number of ways including improper handling of process chemicals or disposal of wastes.
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Veterinary Drug Residue Analysis Using The AutoMate-Q40: An Automated Solution To QuEChERS10/1/2014
QuEChERS is a Quick-Easy-Cheap-Effective-Rugged-Safe extraction method that has been developed for the determination of pesticide residues in agricultural commodities.
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Cloth Media Filtration Removes Coal Ash And Coal Fines At Power Plants1/15/2019
Coal-fired power plants generate coal fines and coal ash from a number of sources, including coal combustion residuals (CCR), particularly fly and bottom ash from coal furnaces, and coal pile runoff during rain events. In support of an industry-wide effort to reduce, improve, and remove coal ash ponds, a variety of technologies have been tested and employed. Read the full application note to learn more.
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Circuit Board Cleanliness Testing10/29/2021
Contamination of circuit boards can bring about severe degradation of insulation resistance and dielectric strength. Cleanliness of completed circuit boards is, therefore, of vital interest. For those companies who have established circuit board cleaning procedures, the MIL Spec P-28809 has been used as a guideline for control. Now a simple "on line" test for the relative measurement of ionic contamination has been developed.
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The 'First Line Of Defense' In Protecting Membrane Filters8/9/2019
Multi-element, self-cleaning pretreatment filters optimize membrane filter life and production while minimizing maintenance and downtime.
LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER
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Every year on November 19, Water Mission observes World Toilet Day — a day designated by the United Nations to focus on the importance of safe sanitation for all.
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Global Water Outcomes expert notes that “water utilities are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities,” citing the role of digital solutions moving forward.
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In this Q&A, Dr. Elke Süss of Metrohm addresses the urgent need for haloacetic acid testing in response to “one of the most significant updates to EU drinking water monitoring in recent years.”
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Amazon and Xylem partner to tackle Mexico’s leaking water systems as the country balances water scarcity and a growing tech sector.
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Water scarcity is increasingly impacting sectors from agriculture and energy to urban planning and high-tech manufacturing. Recently, industry leaders gathered to explore how new technologies and complex industrial demands are forcing a fundamental rethinking of water infrastructure.
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Nobel-winning molecular materials are poised to reinvent purification, desalination, and reuse.
ABOUT DRINKING WATER
In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:
- Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
- Drinking water treatment of source water
- Distribution of treated drinking water to consumers
Drinking Water Sources
Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater.
Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.
Drinking Water Treatment
Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.
There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.
The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.
The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.
During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.
Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.
Drinking Water Distribution
Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.
A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.
Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.